Feb. 29 - Peter's not the only vet irritated with Kerry's continuous references to Vietnam and he expresses it well:

Yes, he had a decent record, but he wasn't Audie Murphy. (For those too young to remember, Murphy won every American valour decoration in WWII and became a movie actor, but never aspired to be president.) more...

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Feb. 28 - Good post by Transplanted Texan Austin about the actual statements made by President Bush when he announced his support of the Federal Marriage Amendment and how at least one of the media in Canada is presenting it as an example of how The Poison Begins to Seep.

On the news portion of the show, given at the top of every hour, Blundell's correspondent (he has a number of them) gave the headlines, as per usual, and recounted the tale of Rosie O'Donnell's 'marriage' to her partner yesterday. Recounting her reasons for marriage, Rosie said, "We were both inspired to come here after the sitting president made the vile and hateful comments he made." But that quote wasn't used in the show. (And nevermind the fact that 'anger' isn't really all that high on the list of good reasons to get married).

What was used in the show was the correspondent's summary of Bush's comments. Now, I believe what the newsreader was attempting to do was summarize Rosie O'Donnell's viewpoint on Bush's statement, but he didn't attribute it to her, and he didn't quote her verbatim. He didn't even say "Rosie said she was getting married in response to Bush's cruel comments." No, he just referred to the comments as evil things.

Let's go take a look at what the President said.

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Feb. 27 - Sgt. Mom hits a nerve and she doesn't pull her punches.

In a remarkably short time, the whole war went down the memory hole until one morning I was sitting at breakfast in the kitchen of the Hilltop house, reading the newspaper, with page after page of pictures of frantic people. People cramming around the iron fence of the American Embassy in Saigon, reaching desperately through the bars, people standing shoulder to shoulder in tiny boats, barely afloat as they waited to be rescued, people trampling others to get into a departing aircraft, a straggling line of people going up a ladder to a rooftop, where a man handed them into a helicopter. Pictures of desperate people with bundles, carrying their children, of babies strapped two and three into the seats of aircraft evacuating them to safety, of helicopters being thrown off the deck of an aircraft carrier, to make room for three more, hovering just overhead and crammed with people who had trusted us, depended on us.

And I think these images are why I too would never consider voting for John Freakin' Kerry.

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Feb. 27 - What, they've only just discovered that the content of Howard Stern's show is over the top? (Network pulls plug on Stern.)

This is beyond absurd. Just change the station or turn the radio off if you don't like it.

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Feb. 27 - I'm glad someone else sees the inherent hypocrisy irony: Enviros Commence Election-Year Attack

The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a widely covered report last week condemning the Bush administration for allegedly politicizing science on a number of controversial issues, ranging from global warming to HIV/AIDS to Iraq's nuclear weapons efforts.

It was quite an ironic charge coming from a self-described activist group whose left-wing, eco-extremist, anti-biotechnology, anti-chemical, anti-nuclear, anti-defense and anti-business screeds embody the very antithesis of the scientific ideal of objectivity.

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Feb. 26 - From The Ornery American: an essay by Orson Scott Card on the recent decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court that highlights the usurpation by that court of rights constituionally conferred to the legislative branch of government appropriately titled Humpty Dumpty Logic:

The Massachusetts Supreme Court has not yet declared that "day" shall now be construed to include that which was formerly known as "night," but it might as well.

By declaring that homosexual couples are denied their constitutional rights by being forbidden to "marry," it is treading on the same ground.

Do you want to know whose constitutional rights are being violated? Everybody's. Because no constitution in the United States has ever granted the courts the right to make vast, sweeping changes in the law to reform society.

Regardless of their opinion of homosexual "marriage," every American who believes in democracy should be outraged that any court should take it upon itself to dictate such a social innovation without recourse to democratic process.

(Link via Ith.

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Feb. 25 - The discussions about the proposed FMA are hindered by the fact that we haven't yet seen the text of the proposed Constitutional Amendment. Any and all discussions about this are taking place in a literal vacuum.

However, having said that, I too am thinking about this issue and especially about the attendant political and social issues that are unavoidable parts of this controversy.

What I suspect is that although the debate will be about same-sex marriages, the underlying debate will be about judicial activism. In every way, it is regrettable that a long overdue debate about the role of the judiciary in the US is shadowed by an issue that is not properly a federal one and will be too open to homophobic hysteria rather than what I consider to be the real political issue. more...

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Feb. 25 - Liberals break ranks during missile defence vote

According to the above, 30 out of 71 votes in support of a Bloc Quebecois motion against participating with the USA in talks about a missile defense program were from the Liberal Party caucus (155 MPs voted against the motion.)

Allowing more free votes in Parliament should prove extremely interesting for constituencies as well as giving Canadians as a whole a closer look at the different political viewpoints within the Liberal caucus.

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Feb. 24 - An interesting article over at Tech Central about a conflict within a Cleveland mosque (Islam in Conflict in Cleveland) which seems to lend weight to speculation that Muslims in the US are involved in a quiet struggle to expose and remove radicals who support and agitate for jihad against the USA.

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Feb. 20 - California's Governor Schwarzenegger has been forced to state the obvious: Gay marriage licenses illegal. Thank you CNN, we know that the governor does not have to power to overturn state law.

I'm going to be brief (you're welcome!) because we went through this in Canada some time ago. (UPDATE: I meant to be brief, but sometimes these posts take on lives of their own.)

Firstly, I high recommend people read this by Eric of Classical Values:

Forget logic, and forget facts. Americans simply do not like being told from above what to think, and what laws they may not have. While getting rid of sodomy laws was certainly the right thing to do, there is nonetheless something undignified about the Supreme Court simply issuing decrees as an end run around popular prejudices -- regardless of how indefensible those prejudices are.

This apparent fickleness, in my view, reveals an indelible feature of the American character -- a contrarian spirit which can be both damnable and laudable. A leading Israeli intellectual recently stated that most Israelis have a Mezuzah attached to their door frames, but that if the government were to order them to display a Mezuzah, about half of them would run outside and yank them off.

Eric also explains the problems with the temporary restaining order filed in San Francisco and agrees that it fails to meet the "irreparable harm" criteria.

I still don't believe that the Federal Marriage Amendment will be approved by the requisite number of state legislatures (don't forget a state legislature can reverse approval at a later date) but I do believe that a number of states will recognize the fairness of passing "civil union laws" or, perhaps as Donald Sensing suggests, sensibly get out of the marriage business altogether (but it's highly unlikely - governments rarely give up jurisdiction over anything, at least at this point in our history.)

One Constitutional amendment I could really get behind is one Doc Rampage brings up is "An alternative to the Federal Marriage Amendment":

So how about an entirely different amendment that would use this popular issue to do something worthwhile? Instead of a Federal Marriage Amendment, we could have a Federal Constitution Amendment that says we are a constitutional federation of states governed by elected representatives, not an oligarchic monolithic state ruled by appointed judges. With the growing outrage over judicial activism, this may be our best chance to get such an amendment passed.

Food for thought.

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Feb. 17 - Wendy McElroy at FOX News comments on the probable passage of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004 (Censorship Is Not Solution for Trashy TV):

Today, the first response to any controversy is, "there ought to be a law." But in matters of morality and freedom of speech, it is best for law to be the very last recourse society considers. The first resort is to let freedom and the free market function.

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Feb. 17 - Pictorial depiction of Rumsfield Fighting Technique via Tim Blair.

My hours have changed this week because I'm too freaking stupid to say no that's the way life is.

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Feb. 13 - From American Digest this post simply called The Wound:

If someone tells you that the melted wax from the candle shrines at Union Square had a radius of 20 feet and a depth of 4 inches at some points before it was scraped away, that's just a data point.

If someone mentions that there were pictures of those we called "the missing" put up on walls about the city, you might recall that. What you won't recall is that they appeared everywhere and grew in numbers on nearly every surface on the island until there was no block and no main station that didn't host a grim and large gallery of these images.

You've forgotten about the shrines, large and small, that appeared at the door of every fire and police station of the city overnight. You don't remember how they grew and then shrank until only a few vases of flowers and faded flags remained.

I could show you the Post's headline from the 12th declaring: 10,000 FEARED DEAD. Many of you would say, "Well, it was only 3,000 and we/ve moved on."

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Feb. 10 - An FBI affidavit indicates the nature of the materrial support which Mohammed Warsame, the Canadian arrested in Minnesota, provided al Qaeda:

... [he] trained in martial arts and with weapons, taught English to al-Qaida members and joined the Taliban front lines, according to an FBI affidavit.

Mohammed Warsame, 30, twice saw combat with front line units of the Taliban while in Afghanistan and once sat next to Osama bin Laden at a meal, said the affidavit, which investigators said was based on interviews with Warsame. "The defendant stated that bin Laden was very inspirational," according to the affidavit.

Investigators say he has acknowledged travelling to Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001. In early 2001, they say, Warsame asked al-Qaida for money to move his family to Afghanistan.

According to the affidavit, an al-Qaida leader instead paid for Warsame's airplane ticket back to North America, and gave him $1,700 US in travel money. Warsame admitted he later wired money to people he had met in the training camps, investigators said.

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Feb. 4 - American Thinker has a very interesting article that focuses on what effect his MBA from Harvard has had on the President's management style. It parallels thoughts I've had, particularly on makeup and behaviour of the Cabinet, but reminds me of some things I knew but had let slip to the back of my mind.

The President's primary identification for me these past years has been as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and although I employ the terms Chief Executive and Executive branch of the government I haven't given as much thought to those designations (understandable enough in a time of war) until the post set out what being awarded an MBA from the Harvard Business School entailed and how that education and training has benefited the President especially given the suddenness of of Sept. 11 and course correction that required.

It never bothered me that the Secs. of State and Defense disagreed. I expected them (and other Cabinet members to disagree) because their job is to advise the President. I wanted them to engage in lively and healthy debates before decisions were made. It fits my own attitude as to how a democracy must function: different points of view honestly advocated, debated, and thrashed out with the aim of exposing the strengths and weaknesses of differing positions. That is the optimal way of reaching decisions, and if it is imperfect, it is still better than any alternatives.

A different problem is the failure of decisions reached at the highest - and, I might add, appropriate - levels which are not being implemented by the staff of those departments. Personnel in both State and Defense have rightly come under fire for failures to follow policies set by their respective chains of command.

It's a good article, and gives a perspective to not only the President but to the presidency that isn't often considered. (Those who take umbrage and rail against Corporate America will disagree!)

Another good post up is this at Chaos Central:

Because nearly every conservative truly DOES understand the left's position. Why's that? Because, by and large, most conservatives were once liberals.

Conservatives KNOW that there is a rational reason to believe what the left believes. It comes from emotion and love for humanity. The divergence comes when someone gains enough experience in the real world to understand that the best way to help these people is not through the policies that your heart espouses.

Conservativism is the answer to their problems. We conservatives want to help the poor or disenfranchised as much as the next guy. But we don't want to do it for them. We want them to succeed on their own because that is the only way to truly help them. Liberals can't understand this position because they have never decided to make the tough decisions. The hard decisions.

One of the most interesting aspects of American history has been the evolution of our relationship with the British. When I was in school, American history courses began with the Magna Carta. We studied the development of English democracy and institutions, read Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Adam Smith and, after a brief tour with the Portuguese, Spanish, French and English explorers and conquistadores, began to study the founding of Jamestown, hopped back to England for a quick look at Cromwell's rise and fall and then landed at Plymouth Rock. We stayed with the colonies until the passage of the Intolerable Acts, briefly discussed the extent of King George's madness, and then read the Declaration of Independence.

Extra points went to the student who said "whoa" when the poor King is accused of single-handedly forcing slavery upon the colonies.

We were extremely paranoid after the Revolutionary War yet remained closely connected with Englands through trade and by our shared language, culture and political traditions. There have been events throughout the centuries that nurtured and forced the rebellious child to stand on its own, grow, learn, and proper, and finally mother and child learned that the other wasn't so bad after all. There were several make or break issues: whether they would stand by us when we took on the Barbary Pirates (they did and continued to protect our shipping interests worldwide,) whether we could side with the British, French or remain neutral during the Napoleonic Wars (we did all three!) whether the British would recognize the Confederacy (they didn't,) and the ultimate test in WWI when again, we finally decided we wouldn't abandon our British heritage or brethren. When the crunch came again during WWII, the irritation against the French insistence of harsh penalties imposed at Versailles kept us out of that war, foolishly deciding to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Fortunately, the Japanese were so anxious to have us in they sent an invitation we couldn't refuse.

Prime Ministers Blair's speech to Congress last July contained a message that only someone who represented that which was once known as the British Empire and the representative of the island that withstood the German assault in WWII could deliver with compassion and understanding for the terrible burden that we inherited by dint of winning the Cold War.

As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible, but, in fact, it is transient.

The question is: What do you leave behind?

And what you can bequeath to this anxious world is the light of liberty.

[...]

And I know it's hard on America, and in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I've never been to, but always wanted to go...

I know out there there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, "Why me? And why us? And why America?"

And the only answer is, "Because destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do."

Oh well. You have to deal the cards played to you.

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Feb. 3 - David Brooks nails it in today's NY Times The C.I.A.: Method and Madness. Describing the mentality that believed human behaviour could be scientifically analyzed, Brooks says:

If you read C.I.A. literature today, you can still see scientism in full bloom. The tone is cold, formal, depersonalized and laden with jargon. You can sense how the technocratic process has factored out all those insights that may be the product of an individual's intuition and imagination, and emphasized instead the sort of data that can be processed by an organization.

This false scientism was bad enough during the cold war, when the intelligence community failed to anticipate seemingly nonrational events like the Iran-Iraq war or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But it is terrible now in the age of terror, because terror is largely nonrational.

What kind of scientific framework can explain the rage for suicide bombings, now sweeping the Middle East? What technocratic mentality can really grasp the sadistic monster who was pulled out of the spider hole a few weeks ago? Under Saddam, Iraqi society seems to have been in a state of advanced decomposition, with drastic consequences for its W.M.D. program. How can corruption and madness be understood by analysts in Langley, who have a tendency to impose a false order on reality?

UPDATE: The British are to undertake their own inquiry into the lapses of intelligence, but John Keegan of the Daily Telegraph notes the massive intelligence failure during WWII that failed to give credence to reports about the Germans developing plans for an unmanned rocket, the V2 and provides ample evidence from history that intelligence is not necessarily the deciding factor for victory and that, in the case of Iraq, there was one big problem:

Above all, it must be remembered that British intelligence was attempting to penetrate the mentality of a man and a regime which were not wholly rational.

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